Hi-Fi Honesty

[David Brook]

I agree with a lot that's been posted in this thread but this is the 21st century not 1970-1980, there was no t'internet then, shop owners had to sit there while punters decided to enter the shop so once inside the tactics were totally different to what they are now. Those tactics did involve telling lies and other shenanigans as I remember having a phone call with a Linn dealer in the 80's, not pleasant at all.

These days bricks and mortar dealers are almost deceased and its all huge distribution warehouses and basically box shifting on a huge scale, Chord as an example I think would be dead if it wasn't for the mojo, 2qute DAC etc which sell in huge numbers. The small one man band like myself is too busy worrying about the likes of amazon (who are ruthless b..ards when it comes to business practices) as they will eventually kill off high street retailing IMO for good.

Honesty as is relevant to my business is just saying it like it is. Yorkshiremen tend to be honest even when it upsets the punters, as an example when asked what can I do to make my LP12 better my answer is sell it and buy a proper deck.

[Daniel Quinn]

ah , but how better . unfortunately your not interested in the truth

[Simon Hickie]

I'm not sure it this qualifies as HiFi honesty or something else. However, I've ploughed through three of Roy Allison's key AES papers and his research into real world speaker performance i.e. what happens in the typical domestic setting. It's very evident that a huge swathe of current speaker offerings totally ignore the elephant in the room that is indeed the room itself. Which then begs the question: what are the majority of speaker manufacturers actually manufacturing and selling? Are they really interested in doing the best job possible for the typical purchaser or merely substituting one less than satisfactory set of speakers with another set of similarly less than satisfactory ones but with a different set of compromises at a higher price point and with much marketing speak?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

That is what I have been saying for years. He was American and didn't work for the BBC thank goodness. But we seem to think the Brits are best at know how to make speakers - WRONG! - the big companies haven't a bloody clue, they either have pretend eeediot gurus like that Harbeth bloke, or employed people with white coats and certificates and qualifications that in reality know feck all about nor seem to care about music. It is all to do with profit and marketing

[SteveTheShadow]

You only have to look at the resistance to Allison derived designs such as Cubes or my own OmniMets to see what a nigh on impossible task it is, to convince your average hi-fi person that there is a different and perhaps better way to go; a way that will allow the user to hear music coming from their system.
BBC type pinpoint imaging and speakers in the middle of the room have too much of a hold and IMO neither of these have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with actual music itself.

The most common objection to these Allison/ Stig Carlsson, Shahinian types, that I have repeatedly come up against are quote (no I'm not making this up:)

"your sound is completely dependent on the room, much more than front facing speakers. You are putting the recorded acoustic into a deliberately generated incorrect sound envirionment.
If you want to hear a recording in full fidelity, the room needs to be neutralised, not brought in on purpose. It's completely perverse and goes against every principle for hi-fi sound reproduction to be doing that.

You are making no attempt to do remove the room, so by definition it isn't hi-fi. It can't be. At the end of the day omni is just a sound effect that isn't on the recording. And no matter how in inverted commas, pleasant it might be, it is absolutely not hi-fi by any definition I am famiiar with. You can't be taken seriously as a speaker designer if you are having anything to do with these things."

No names, no pack drill and it's nobody anyone on here or AT knows, but there it is, the brick wall we are up against in all its immovability.
Omni and semi-omni users are forever going to be a tiny minority, but that's OK, we enjoy our version of hi-fi.

What I'd like to do next year is a semi omni with a big bass driver, similar to Stu's, but domestically acceptable. I have a pair of Doc modded 12 inchers so there's no excuse.

[David Brook]

That is what I have been saying for years. He was American and didn't work for the BBC thank goodness. But we seem to think the Brits are best at know how to make speakers - WRONG! - the big companies haven't a bloody clue, they either have pretend eeediot gurus like that Harbeth bloke, or employed people with white coats and certificates and qualifications that in reality know feck all about nor seem to care about music. It is all to do with profit and marketing

So far in my 54 years I would say the Japanese make the best speakers of all the ones I have heard throughout that time.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Steve - Which arsehole said that. It is the opposite of reality. Fighting a room can never give you fidelity, only by being in sympathy with the acoustic.

It can be proved, but we are both showing speakers for normal size rooms, even Dave's dem room was too big, very very few people have a listening space that large and Owston is a complete no go. It needs Cubix or Cubix Pro or a version like karatestu is working on with a 12 incher to do that room.

Smaller normal room bake offs like the one just had at savvypauls place will do it, but even then it is too much change for some people to accept easily, especially if you have an agenda to hope it wont work.

The best way to show how it works is for people to live with it, then they see. The proof is in the NVA review archive.

[SteveTheShadow]

It's nobody we know who said that Doc and it was to smeone else. I found it on on DIYAudio, when searching for others doing omni designs. The post was from 2010 but it made me laugh out loud. On the one hand they were dissing Omnis yet at the same time praising Radialstrahlers at a show. Go figure.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I think Nick worked out what was going on at MCRU and what was needed, I am getting quite good at judging his body language. From that experience I also realised what was needed which made me talk about producing a 12 incher cab based on Allison ground coupling principles (doped and no crossover) that doubled as a speaker stand for the Cube1, that would have done it, pref bi-amped but paralleled with decent size amp would do it. BIG room solution.

[SteveTheShadow]

Yes, those doped Chinese 12 inchers you sold me would be a good basis for a BBS-O (Big Bastard Semi Omni) experiment.
Stu's adventures with his giant bass boxes are great to read.